With global increases in consumption of the easily available resources of crude oil, the petroleum industry has moved toward alternative sources, such as extra heavy oils from less accessible areas, e.g., deepwater production, and processing intensive oil resources such as the bitumen. However, the production, transportation and refining of these resources presents many problems and challenges for the oil industry. In order to fully utilize these alternative materials, compositional knowledge must be developed in order to efficiently generate energy and tailor feasible solutions to overcome the problems associated with refining and utilization of these petroleum resources. From health, safety and environmental perspectives, air pollution caused by emissions of SOX and NOX, and soot or other particulate matter from the combustion of petroleum fuels is a matter of significant concern. Intensive research and development efforts to develop better catalysts, processes and solutions for rigorous refining operations are paramount in order to limit the amount of sulfur, nitrogen and aromatic waste, and produce ultra-clean transportation fuels that meet existing fuel regulations. The chemical structure of different petroleum heteroatom (S, N, and O) containing molecules determines their behavior in production and upgrading. Therefore, efficient and economic exploitation of these new energy resources hinges on the detailed understanding of the chemistry and structure of the constituents of these complex natural resources.
Advances in FT-ICR MS have made it possible to achieve high resolving power and mass accuracy in order to resolve and provide detailed compositional information for complex mass spectra of some analytes, such as crude oil and bitumen. Electrospray ionization Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (ESI FT-ICR MS) has the potential to provide critical information on the polar compound inventories of crude oils. However, the chemical scope of ESI mass spectrometry is limited by analyte acidity or basicity in common ESI solvent systems (toluene and methanol) and are unable to provide complete compositional analysis of many neutral or near-neutral compounds in a complex matrix, such as crude oil or bitumen.